CSA - Help needed

confusedmum1

Hi all.
New to this so any help would be great.

My partner got a call this morning from the CSA telling him that they are going to take £116 direct out of his wage every week from now on, for maintenance of his 2 children and arrears owed. £40.00 maintenance and £76.00 arrears. When my partner said it was too much (being 45% of his wages) the lady on the telephone told him tough or you could always get a bank loan or ask a friend for the arrears money. This to me is out of order, not proffesional, and soooo rude. Thank goodness he answered the telephone and not me as I would have exploded at comments like that.

The arrears repayment is too high for us to manage with financially and we just wondered if anyone else had come accross it and how can we get this amount reduced.

We have 2 children ourselves (one who is disabled). I work part time and my partner recently got a full time job after being made redundant two years ago. The CSA say that over the last 3 years he has nearly £8,000 of arrears (even though they knew he was unemployed and had to pay £5 per week out of his JSA).

We have his two children to stay with us one night every two weeks (unless their mum announces otherwise) but would love to have them more but their mum won't allow it.

Please don't get me wrong we do not disagree with child maintenance and paying for the care of your children, we only disagree with the amount that the CSA are wanting every week for the arrears.

Any help or advice on this matter would be great.

Thank you

gratefulforhelp_2

Your DH is paying for the care of his children, but that pedantry aside, how old are the children/when was the first claim made? The rules are different I think for CSA 1 and CSA 2.

shell_542

gratefulforhelp wrote: »

Your DH is paying for the care of his children, but that pedantry aside, how old are the children/when was the first claim made? The rules are different I think for CSA 1 and CSA 2.

I don't understand what you mean, I didn't read the OP saying the children weren't her partners' responsibility. I think you read something into it that wasn't there.

40% is the max they can take from someone's wages. Have they worked out a higher "average weekly NET income"?

It sounds like you need a copy of your partner's information held by the CSA to try and figure out why these arrears have added up when he was paying out of his JSA. It sounds like they have him down as still working for the past 3 years, or it is arrears from an earlier date. Did he notify them when he stopped working and went onto JSA?( I would assume so as they were taking money out of it)

Once you've figured out if the arrears are correct or not ... if correct, there's very little you can do unfortunately, as they don't care if the 40% is affordable or not. You could try and negotiate paying the arrears back over a longer period. 2 years is their normal "guideline". But they don't normally budge.

If the arrears are wrong you'll have to make a complaint and try and get them corrected. Help from NACSA might come in handy then.

skibadee

I presume allowances have been made for the 2 children you have together in his Maintenance assessment of £40 a week?

I wish you the best of luck with this...2yrs is their guideline for collecting arrears....very difficult to get them to extend this, however as one of your children is disabled you may be able to ask them to take this into consideration re., the amount of money collected against arrears......they may not make any alllowances for this, but its worth asking.......I would recommend a Website called ...A FAIRER CSA FOR ALL....which gave my OH and myself tremendous help.

gratefulforhelp_2

shell_542 wrote: »

I don't understand what you mean, I didn't read the OP saying the children weren't her partners' responsibility. I think you read something into it that wasn't there.

"paying for the care of your children" but we're off-topic.

shell_542

gratefulforhelp wrote: »

"paying for the care of your children" but we're off-topic.

I know that was what you were referring to ... but what was wrong with it? It sounded a bit like nit picking to me. It was just a general comment "all parents should pay for their children" She was agreeing that he should pay, so didn't see the need for the remark is all.